


A Lesson on Planning Your Entrances and Exits as an Immortal Warrior and Strategist

by yeehaw7



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, absolutely TASTELESS potty humor, booker's return (but not exactly centred on that), borderline crack fic let's be honest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:33:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27238099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeehaw7/pseuds/yeehaw7
Summary: pissno, unfortunately, i'm being serious. piss.written for the fictober day 1 prompt: "no, come back!"
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Background Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 1
Kudos: 36





	A Lesson on Planning Your Entrances and Exits as an Immortal Warrior and Strategist

**Author's Note:**

> where to begin. 
> 
> i think first i need to mention that this fic does, legitimately, contain piss and it IS used to playfully (and consensually. and disgustingly) tease a character the same way someone covered in mud would jokingly try and cover other people in mud. if that grosses you out or squicks for you in any way, maybe don't read. 
> 
> secondly, i'm so sorry. i have no excuse. it's fictober. i needed to write something fast and i still didn't post it on time but october isn't finished yet so TECHNICALLY it is fine. i have the sense of humor of a five year old and i would apologise for it if there was anyone left standing to hear the apology. i am fully aware that this is quite possibly the worst thing i've ever written but after staring at it for an hour i simply cannot stand to see it anymore so i will do a little gay mouseclick and then i will never think about it again
> 
> thirdly, i will again stress this is a FICTOBER fic and thus written a lot faster than most of my fics and also has little to no editing. all mistakes are completely on me because i do not beta because that would require me to submit to the mortifying experience of being known. also i think this does technically qualify as crack fic because it is That Bad but that's not unusual here on @yeehaw7 on ao3

Overall, it had been an interesting century, Nile reflected. 

The pain of Booker’s betrayal had absolutely taken its sweet time to settle. Nile counted nearly a year before Nicky stopped accidentally setting the table for five, another nine on top of that before the sad creases around Joe’s eyes smoothed out and Andy picked up a cloth to dust any of the abandoned bookcases. 

Joe, unlike Andy, was still young enough (relatively) to remember the beginning of his immortal life and had told her that the assimilation of her known world to changed would go one of two ways: virtually unnoticeable or make every small shift in her preconception of the world feel like a punch to the throat. 

And his prediction was right: the world had changed so much from what she had grown up with. When Booker’s time was up and she found herself reflecting, as Joe and Nicky collected up Andy, Quynh and Booker from opposite parts of the world, she could barely pinpoint when things had begun to change. Part of it could probably be attributed to their aversion of the United States - since she was unfamiliar with just about every country they travelled to over the century, there was no shock value in waking up and going about her day. The others, of course, would point out changes both big and small to her as they travelled, but it was clear that overtime they had learned to keep their balance with the sands of time shifting under their feet. 

Quynh was an unexpected addition to the onslaught of new and old and changed. If Nile had really thought about it - which she hadn’t, of course she hadn’t, not when it caused the rest of her immortal family so much pain and it still plagued her nightmares most nights - she would have realised that five hundred going on six hundred years of salt water would almost definitely have had an effect on an iron coffin. Seeing Quynh dragging herself hand over hand up a low-trawling fishing net in her dreams one night should not have been surprising, and retrieving her from the coastland morgue in England that Nile saw through Quynh’s eyes should have been the logical next step. But it wasn’t, and it was another seven years before they found her, Nile not having yet learned the heightened sense of recognition that Andy had to decipher Quynh’s surroundings. 

And then, a miracle on top of miracle, Andy’s immortality returned. The recovery of her love brought her to life, sparking energy in her that Nile hadn’t realised existed and that was evidently a great relief to Joe and Nicky to be able to see again. Her body retained the eight years she had aged, placing her in looks to be in her mid 30s, but her wounds closed up as they had before and she seemed to  _ glow _ , passion filling her and exploding outwards onto anything she touched. The combination of Quynh’s return and Copley’s urging seemed to make her truly believe that they could  _ do some good _ , which pleased Nicky to no end. 

Even a hundred years on, Joe and Nicky had a habit of introducing her to new (old?) safehouses like they would old friends. This occasion apparently called for a cliffside cottage surrounded by green expanses and trees that, Joe made sure to mention to her, were older than he and Nicky. It was glaringly obvious that the couple were procrastinating their departure by fussing over her comfort, showing her where to find any necessities and then standing in the kitchen for an hour, making idle small talk before she shooed them out the door. From the kitchen window, she saw them part reluctantly with a hug before Nicky headed down the cliff towards the sea and Joe began his journey further inland. 

And then she was alone. It was not the first time since her first death, but as time wore on, each separation seemed to tug more at the edges of her skin, pulling it so tight over her bones and muscle that she feared if she was left alone too long, one day it would split. It was a great relief then, when less than a week passed before Joe returned, Andy and Quynh in tow, radiant as ever, and their light seeped into the stone and wood of the cottage. 

~

“Come one, come all!” a familiar accented voice shouted out across the grass, “Come witness! Today is the day I have completely lost my dignity.” 

Nicky’s figure appeared at the top of the hill at the edge of the safehouse property, backpack slung across one shoulder.  _ He looks well _ , Nile thought absently, considering the three weeks apart from his other half. Aside from the fact that he was, perplexingly, soaking wet. 

“You’re wet!” Joe yelled, leaning out the kitchen window. 

Nicky’s only reply was an upwards twitch of his eyebrows and the hint of a smile, sliding his backpack off onto the grass beside Andy and Quynh, their knees touching and ankles intertwined. The urge to stare at the view from the grassy hill on the cliff above the sea much like Andy and Quynh were doing now was one that Nile had resisted during the week, instead giving the couple breathing room for downtime before everyone arrived. Now, however, with Nicky dripping and Booker taking the trek up the hill, she held no qualms about invading the couple’s privacy. Not that they had really had any privacy to begin with, not with Joe surreptitiously keeping an eye on them most hours of the day as if they might just both disappear if he blinked too long. 

“And how have you lost your dignity today, Nick?” Andy asked, using one hand to shield her eyes from the sun as she peered up at him from where she sat. “Chickens, again?” 

Nile snorted, recalling the night a couple decades ago -  _ and it felt like yesterday, man, I’m getting old  _ \- when Quynh and Andy had gleefully told the tales of Nicky’s chicken coop escapades over the last millennium; the most memorable when he attempted to rescue a runaway headscarf, got his eye pecked out as he bent to pick it up and had hurriedly made an escape before the local townsfolk realised that he was A. regrowing an eye as he B. bled out. 

“Unfortunately, no,” Nicky said, unbuttoning his short-sleeved shirt and peeling it off to reveal an equally soaked t-shirt underneath. “This is much worse.” 

Booker arrived at that moment, slinging his backpack on the ground next to Nicky’s, his breathing laborious. “Nicky picked me up,” he began, pausing for breath, “and we got as far as the main road to the nearest town here when there was a police checkpoint and we split.” 

“Oh, so you weren’t trailing behind because you’d said some dumb shit and had been given time out?” Andy said. The joke was a weak attempt at a check-in, an endlessly exhaustively  _ Andy _ type approach to trying to make sure Booker could connect seamlessly with them once again. 

Booker laughed and Nile saw the sound settle into Andy’s shoulders, the muscles relaxing. “No, no. I went the long way around.” 

“And Nicky?”

“I, uh,” Nicky said, then he paused, seemingly weighing up his words. “I realised walking through a 22nd century town with a sword strapped to my belt was not going to work out in my favour, so I took a shortcut through the sewers.”

There was a moment of silence. Joe, having emerged from the kitchen and looking as if he were bending down to retrieve Nicky and Booker’s backpacks, quickly straightened up and moved back. 

“The sewers.” Andy said, in disbelief. “The sewers, Nicky.” 

“So you’re telling me you’re soaked in piss.” Joe said flatly. “You are soaked. Not just in water. But in piss.” 

“Amongst other things, yes.” 

“Nicolo,” Quynh said, eyeing the dripping shirt in Nicky’s hands and the rivulets of  _ piss _ trickling out of his hair down his neck, “I love you, but you’re disgusting.” 

“I  _ was _ going to kiss you.” Joe said, making a face not dissimilar to that of a kicked puppy. 

“Ah, you mean to deprive me, Yusuf.” 

“You’re soaked! In piss!”

“I am certain we have kissed in worse situations.” 

“Eugh. Go shower.” Andy said. “And while you’re at it, incinerate those clothes, please?” 

The edges of Nicky’s lips twitched. “Oh, these clothes?” he said, lifting the sopping wet piss shirt. He twitched his arm as if to throw it and Joe flinched. 

"Nicky, if you get piss on me, I can’t promise I won’t slit your throat." Andy said warningly, shifting her leg away from where it rested at Nicky’s feet. 

“There will be NO throat-slitting,” Joe said hurriedly, jokingly. “There will also be no piss-soaking. Please, go shower.” 

“Joe, my love, surely not.” 

“It is piss, Nicky.” 

“Perhaps, but it is piss that is on  _ me _ . Is that not attractive to your ears?”

“Absolutely not.” 

“You are a… what is the word? Killjoy. Party pooper.” Nicky stepped forward, wielding his shirt like a mediocre fencer with a floppy sword. Joe held his hands up in surrender and stepped back. 

“If I were you,” Andy said in a casual, conspiratorial tone, leaning back with her hands behind her head, “I would run.” 

Joe ran. 

It seemed to take him several moments to realise that in order to keep running, he would have to double-back UP the hill or else risk falling off the edge of the cliff. He feinted, dodging Nicky, and Nicky stuck to him like the world’s most determined defense player. 

“No, come back!” Nile heard Nicky say faintly. 

After a moment where Andy, Nile, Quynh and Booker simply sat and watched the two run around like headless chickens, Nicky gained the upper hand and caught up to Joe, using his discarded shirt as a twisted take on a lasso and pulling Joe to his chest. He tilted Joe’s chin up and kissed him in a way that Nile would almost describe as sweet if she wasn’t aware of the sour, stinking piss permeating Nicky’s... everything.

Even from a short distance away, she could hear Joe hum into the kiss and break off, his arms circled around Nicky’s waist.

“You taste of piss,” he said firmly. “I stand by that you are the heart of my hearts, the song in my soul, but please do not ever kiss me while you are in this state ever again.” 

And Nicky, grinning, pulled him in for another. 

**Author's Note:**

> congrats! u got through the piss fic. *hands u a cloth to wipe yourself down with*


End file.
